


red sky in the morning

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [175]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Arien has a lot of feelings about our faves and one in particular, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Out of Angband! finally, Pining, Post-apastron and basically inspired by it, since her father was a mapmaker and she knew the sea, the title is from the old adage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:14:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22084714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: “Gwindor,” she says, grasping at the half-hope that Wachiwi will know his name. “Has he…has he returned?”The answer is: not yet.
Relationships: Arien & Fingon | Findekáno, Arien & Gwindor, Arien & Maedhros | Maitimo, Arien & Original Character(s)
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [175]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25





	red sky in the morning

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [apastron](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22082773) by [Mythopoeia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mythopoeia/pseuds/Mythopoeia). 



> Hey everybody! Thanks for sticking with us this long. To celebrate the AU passing 500k, the authors encourage you to ask us anything AU-related on our AU tumblr, allthatglittersisnotgoldrush.tumblr.com, and we will answer anything and everything this weekend.
> 
> We would love to hear your thoughts and questions!

Estrela has two eyes when she sleeps. She is often a slave, often in pain, but in the moonlit world, she looks on her captors and comrades with full sight.

This makes waking something of a tragedy.

In the makeshift doctor's tent, though, Estrela becomes Belle again, without too much anguish. Her heart and mind are busy, seeking more agility than her weary body can yet supply. Maria, her old comrade, must have brought the blanket while she slept. It is still cold, but she is a little warmer now.

She is still in pain, but not, she thinks, in danger. There is no need to call for help.

The young doctor had gone away first—friendly, capable Fingon, blunt in his speech but subtle in his observations. She thinks that he was sorry but not pitying. Hurt _for_ her rather than _by_ her. She liked him at once.

Gwindor never cared at all about her scars; she was alive, and that was what mattered to him. She told Gwindor more of her agonies than he told her of his; she thought (and thinks) that it is easier to speak of what was done to one’s own self, than to one’s beloved.

With her mouth still anxious and dry, Gwindor fills her head now that her head is clearer. She tries hard—so hard—not to think of anyone else, as if that is possible. Each time she wakes she wants to believe that she can shutter away the memories a little better.

If she thinks of small hands or voices, she will be broken up with tenderness. If she thinks of grey eyes and a weary body she will be torn by a woman's longing, and a lame creature's fear.

Estrela has prayed, even before she knew that anyone would save her, or that Russ—the others—would need saving after that.

But all of this—all of this prayer, past—makes her a terrible fool. She has heard the demon-men speak to him, first in the barracks, when he bled and burned and fevered, and after, when she was an undesirable bait in an irresistible trap. Estrela heard Bauglir’s voice for the first time in years, that night she heard him speak to Russandol. She knew that Bauglir laid hands on him, and knew that he gloried in a favorite’s ruin. She dug her nails into the still-soft flesh of her upper, inner arms. She was the girl in the parlor again, but only in panic.

It was hard to find hate, even, in that kind of fear.

The boy with the flayed back and the carven flesh found his tongue before he even found wakefulness, before he even submitted himself to any sort of comfort.

Belle had to sit in the dark and wonder what it meant about herself, that she had spent those years in silence.

Breathing in winter air, warmed by stiff wool, she is not strong enough to rise from her bedroll. Doctor Fingon did not need to tell her this. He administered broth, and some stronger concoctions, during his visit to her, and then satisfied himself again that she had not grown feverish from the exertion of talking and drinking. Maria gave her a little gruel, afterwards, and it was enough to worry her poor stomach.

 _Please sleep_ , he told her. And then he spoke of God. Only in passing— _food within the hour, God willing,_ but it made her think strange thoughts: thoughts of giving thanks.

Estrela is free, despite her confinement, but she cannot yet be grateful. Not until she _knows_.

_He saw you, before he left. Looked for you, rather._

_What is it?_ Sticks asked, squatting with her hands in the dirt. She was tugging at a carrot.

 _What?_ The overseers were far enough away that Belle could answer, but her mouth was tired and the word fell, slurred, from her lips.

_You and Russandol._

(Her blush is a bruise.)

_You could see it in his face how glad he was to see you you could see it in his face—_

People come and go, in the afternoon light. After Maria, none of them come inside the tent. They are shapes and shadows on the other side of canvas, and she can only see them from certain angles, from one eye. There are voices, speaking dialects and tongues she can merely guess, or that she does not recognize at all.

Here is what she knows: If Gwindor left her here—and he did—these must be friends. Doctor Fingon did not seem to have a shred of cruelty about him. He was, instead, like the civilized gentlemen who used to visit her father’s house, albeit a civilized gentleman with braids threaded like a native’s.

Belle reaches back, back into Estrela, to try and understand what other choice she might have made, at any time _before_.

Russandol (here, she is thinking of him again) seems to believe that the world was made to punish him. She is not sure what real claim she has on a different fate. Fingon’s spirit was familiar; that must be why she is thinking of her past.

In her present, pain remains her nearest companion. Her wrists are raw. Her belly is tender, as it struggles with the very food it craved. The smoke has given her a sore throat and a sore eye. She must correct the thought before it forms, fully, for she—like Maria—almost counted two.

(The shapes on the other side of canvas are clearer than was the shifting light that reached her beneath the door. Yet, they are foreigners. They are only men and women, not demons, and not angels. These are mere mortals, though the young doctor spoke of God.)

In her own language, she prays. In her own language, she considers a future in which she is not chained to death.

That future is more frightening than anything she has yet known.

After a while, a woman comes who is not one of the compound women. She has long dark braids and soft eyes. Her name is Wachiwi. She tips a cup against Estrela’s lips, with one slim arm ringed about her shoulders in support. The water is clean, and warm, flavored with crushed mint leaves. It is almost—it _is_ —tea.

“Fingon is attending the others,” Wachiwi explains. She is beautiful and whole and does not look as if death could take hold of her. “But tell me what your troubles are.”

What Wachiwi means is: _Are you unwell, in this instant, urgently_. Belle is embarrassed; Estrela is lost. “I have no troubles,” she answers, very mindful of the gruesome twist of her lips. Wachiwi is seeing it for the first time. “Only—only, would you tell me, how long have I been asleep?”

“It is more than a day since we met you,” Wachiwi tells her, recognizing the layers such a question has. She holds the cup clasped in one capable brown hand. It is good to see a hand that is calloused, rather than abused; somehow, the goodness of that makes Belle want to weep.

(Russandol had craftsman’s hands. They held to the ghost of their former beauty, somehow.)

She mustn’t weep. How many times, must she teach herself that lesson? Even in safety—

(Before the fire, before the lung-gnawing smoke, she wept in the deepest despair she had known. _It is easier to live with what is done to one’s own self, than to one’s beloved._ )

“Gwindor,” she says, grasping at the half-hope that Wachiwi will know his name. “Has he…has he returned?”

The answer is: _not yet_.

Gwindor comes back, in this frightening future. Before the sun sets, Gwindor joins the makeshift camp with two weary children beside him

They are not Belle’s children, not of old. Their faces are now carved by what they saw. As for Gwindor, weariness has left him a body; nothing more than that. At the sight of Belle, who Fingon and Wachiwi helped outside her tent as the light changed, Gwindor’s body rears its head

He looks Belle in the eye, but he does not need to. He does not need to show her his grief. Even with only half her sight, Belle and Estrela both can see who is missing.


End file.
